Köln: perfect parking place

The first German stop on our cruise up the Rhine was the ancient, lovely, and fascinating city of Köln (known by most English-speakers as Cologne). And Viking landed us in a perfect place to see the high points (pun intended!) of the city: right next to the Hohenzollernbrücke (Hohenzollern Bridge) you can see here. The particular member of that family in this photo is Wilhelm II—yes, the guy that's probably most responsible for WWI. But it's a nice statue, no?

The bridge is an imposing structure, with three sets of train tracks in addition to two handy pedestrian walkways that span the 1300+ feet needed to cross the mighty river, still fairly close to its mouth. It was destroyed toward the end of WWII, but rebuilt quickly thereafter. (The Wikipedia article linked above has an amazing panoramic picture of the bridge and a good bit of the city when it was almost all rubble.)

But if you take a close look at it in the picture on the left (click to zoom in) the pedestrian walk has some rather elaborate decorations along its entire length. That same Wikipedia article tells us that, starting in 2008, the custom of "lovers' locks" really caught on in Köln. Here's a closeup:

Fortunately, the walkway on the other side of the bridge doesn't have locks packed quite so tightly; I'm not sure you could find any empty space here, should you want to pledge your love in 2022!

I know that you know that the main attraction in Köln is the cathedral you can see over Frank's shoulder here (he was one of the best of the top-rate Viking local guides who showed us around). And I'll have plenty to show-and-tell about it next time. But although our time in this wonderful city was criminally minimal, we did get to see a lot of other interesting sites, and I want to give them their due.  

For example, here's another big church, this one Romanesque and of an even older origin than its more famous cousin...

This building—Groß Sankt Martin, or Great St. Martin—has a particularly interesting history, some of which Frank was able to impart to us (and you can get the full story in this Wikipedia article). It was largely destroyed during the war, and because there had been so many different additions and alterations to it over the centuries, they had trouble deciding which "version" of the church to restore!

As is often the case in German cities, the Rathaus (or City Hall; "Rat" means counsel, or advice, in German) is also super-photogenic. It was also destroyed by Allied bombing except for part of the tower, according to Wikipedia, and was restored mostly in a more modern style. So we're glad the Gothic tower was spared...

But there are interesting modern buildings here, too, like this one. It has something to do with the city government; the coat of arms on the corner of the side wall represents the city.

Notice also the Ukrainian flag. We saw expressions of solidarity with Ukraine throughout our trip, even in the small towns (until we got to Switzerland, but, well, they have historically had a different way of looking at conflicts). Here's another big banner in the old city of Köln. If we were told what the names on it signify, I don't remember, sorry.

I mentioned the "ancient" nature of the city back up at the top of the post, and here we had our first—but definitely not our last—reminder of just how extensive the Roman empire was. Here is a portion of the north gate to the city, built in 50 C.E., when Rome founded a colony here. It was actually a favorite of Agrippina, sister of Nero and wife of everyone's favorite emperor, Claudius (otherwise known as Derek Jacobi). Back in Roman times the town was known as Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, and you can see the acronym CCAA all around the old city—thanks to Frank we knew what it meant when we saw it, plus we also learned that the current name of the city doesn't have anything to do with perfume.  
To finish up back at the bridge, here's the handsome, and enormous, train station that's on the downstream side of the left end of the bridge. Next up, the even more amazing structure that's on the upstream side...